For decades, Bernadette Hall has treasured the works of her good friend Joanna Margaret Paul.
They have graced the walls of her home and been tucked away to find again one day. Since 2003, when Paul died, they have been reminders of good times had with this special person who had a "profound" effect on her.
"It was a lovely friendship. I never thought I’d get rid of any [works]."
Now nearly 80, Hall has decided to part with 13 works from her collection.
"I’m more now listening and following the hints and the words, the music or whatever else that seems to tell me what I should be doing. It sounds a bit superstitious, it’s like a change in my balance. It’s like I’ve been pushed around by this lovely force that’s suggested it’s a good thing to do now."
Some of the works she has submitted for exhibition "Spring in the Parapara", at Brett McDowell Gallery in Dunedin, are rediscovered pen and pencil drawings with a slight Japanese air that she describes as "deep and gorgeous and so, so light".
"I found it very straightforward, I just wanted to keep the things that are really precious to me. It’s not like giving things away, it is like lifting up the treasures. Like that advert on TV: ‘no regerts’."
The exhibition has also provided an opportunity for Hall, who was named by Paul as one of her literary executors, to also "get out there" some of Paul’s unseen poetry.
"It meant a lot to me. It wasn’t a heavy burden. I felt this great love and admiration, amazement that she became such a warm friend."
Hall, who now lives in Amberley Beach in the Hurunui, and her co-executor Charles Bisley, found cupboards of folders filled with poetry and little handmade books filled with poems and paintings in Paul’s home after her death.
A selection of Paul’s poems have been put together, and illustrated with images of the works being exhibited, into a booklet. Hall chose the poems based on what touched and moved her, and on request of McDowell, also included an essay of her own on her relationship with Paul.
"I found it quite difficult, quite emotional. I’m thrilled this little book will come out and it’s a permanent thing."
Hall herself is a respected poet and playwright with a Prime Minister’s Award for Literary Achievement in Poetry (2015) and 11 published collections of poetry, but does not call herself a poet.
Instead, she reserves her praise for Paul, whom she met when they both taught at the former St Dominic’s College in Dunedin in 1971. Hall, who studied classics at the University of Otago, was teaching English and Latin, and Paul, art, part-time. Unbeknown to Hall, she was also painting the Stations of the Cross in the Catholic church in Port Chalmers where she was living.
"I had no knowledge really, I didn’t move in her circle, it was all quite new to me. But it was very much part of her world. She was this mysterious person, this lovely enchanting person who then vanished to get married at midterm break."
"I was very drawn to her. It was a door opening for me, if you like, on to the world of art. Even the world of poetry, I didn’t know people involved in that world. It was the most exciting thing."
She recalls an "amazing incident" when in Port Chalmers one day with Paul. Down one street came Ralph Hotere and down another came Hone Tuwhare.
"It was very early in my own writing life. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. These people were drawn to her. She was magical to me in those ways.
"She had these amazing connections that she wasn’t boastful about at all. It was just the life she liked to inhabit."
Hall, who is co-godmother to Paul’s son Pascal, felt very protective of her in various circumstances.
"I felt like the sensible one, the nurse in some Shakespearean drama. If I couldn’t meet her on a sublime level, at least I could be helpful."
Paul also was not boastful about her work. An example is how many people, even those close to her, did not know she was painting the Stations of the Cross.
"She loved her work to be included in things but she would often remove herself. I’d go up say to Whanganui for her exhibitions and she’d stand back against the wall watching. She wasn’t ambitious in a predictable way, she was very intense and this was definitely her life’s work.
"That intrigued me because I balanced teaching and beginning writing and I was amazed that someone would throw themselves into whatever was their call, art, poetry, freed from some of those solid constraints. "
But she also struggled with what Paul saw in her. It was not until Hall was in her 40s that she had her first poem published and her first book Heartwood, in 1989, illustrated by a series of Paul’s drawings of nature.
"I always loved poetry but was never tempted to write it. It never occurred to me. I was busy having babies and teaching. I think it was Joanna’s example of just trusting yourself to it.
"She had me on a different level. She loved what I was writing and she encouraged me.
"She sought my advice and my help in the poetry, basically just in the love poems."
When Hall started writing, the pair were living in different places — Hall moved to Christchurch in 1981 — but they kept in touch regularly through letters and the odd visit to each other’s homes when they were passing through.
"We hadn’t been in each other’s presence that long, there were just these letters — I don’t know if mine still exist any more — and I purchased her work.
She remembers Paul’s love of the spiritual and attending lectures, workshops and weekends involving spiritual matters.
"She would involve herself in things, whereas I might put my toe in the water. I admired the way she was so open and yet kind of secret. She could also be very practical. She was a very good cook."
Hall has "lots and lots" of those letters still and during the process of putting together the booklet and exhibition, she sorted through many of them.
"They’re very warm and very affectionate."
Despite their friendship, there were many aspects of Paul’s life she had no idea about until she read her autobiography.
"She had such an emotionally rich life. It opened up so many doors and windows to me that I had no idea about. There were so many more facets to her than I’d even known."
Hall went on to edit a book of Paul’s poems, mostly unpublished, while she was writer in residence at Victoria University in 2006.
"I thought, ‘Dear Joanna, I’m taking charge here darling and I’m going to put these poems in and sort them out. If there are two versions, I’ll just have to take that version there, I hope you don’t mind’.
"Working with the dead is actually quite peaceful. I really wanted to get her voice out, I knew it was so much richer and there was so much more there than what people have seen.
"That was a real thrill for me doing that book."
Like Love Poems: Joanna Margaret Paul was published by Victoria University in 2006.
Hall’s second book, in 1991, Of Elephants etc featured some poems written in Akaroa where Paul and her boys spent a few days with her. Around that time she also dabbled in playwrighting, winning the Aoraki Festival playwriting award with her play Glad and the Angels.
Hall received a number of fellowships over the years including the Canterbury University writer in residence in 1991 and the Robert Burns Fellowship in 1996. She also took part in the International Writers’ Programme in Iowa in 1997. Then, in 2004, Hall and Dunedin artist Kathryn Madill received an Artists in Antarctica Award.
"I had a moment of revelation in the ice and snow and the amazing feeling of being at the bottom of the world that when I got back to Christchurch I would give up high school teaching, foolishly early."
So she and husband John bought a bach at Amberley Beach made up of three army huts and set about transforming it into a pretty cottage.
Not the type to sit and type all day, Hall likes to have time to think as ideas or inspiration strikes.
"I’m not a fulltime writer in that sense. I’m probably a fulltime poetry thinker, which means you get a bit vague at times and people get concerned and ask ‘did you hear what I’m saying?"’
Fancy Dancing (2020) was her last published book, which she described as being like a full stop. She has had a break from writing over the past few years and during this time lost her younger sister suddenly at age 70.
"I’m just beginning to get back on the horse now. I’m a potterer, just more intense about it once I left school."
If someone asked what she did, Hall says she would never say she was a poet.
"No, no, no. I’m a very happy blurb writer for one or two friends. I adore gardening and adventures like this working with Brett."
For Hall, who was invested as a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2017 for services to literature, writing poetry has been a wonderful life.
For 10 years, she was also the poetry editor of Takahē magazine and for five years poetry editor for The Press.
Poems from her collection The Way of the Cross have been used by composer Anthony Ritchie in his Stations Symphony premiered by the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra in 2014 to mark the third anniversary of the region’s earthquakes.
"I’m grateful to Joanna for showing me an example, she wasn’t the only one, that to pour yourself into the arts is a good thing to do. Not that I did it quite, I’ve done a lot of creative writing teaching and co-founded the Hagley Writers Institute. It’s been a more balanced kind of thing between earning for survival and poetry."
She says her main feeling about her relationship with Paul is gratitude.
"How come I met Joanna?
"How come we were so far apart all those years yet there be such affection? I was delighted to be able to help her."
TO SEE
"Spring in the Parapara", Brett McDowell Gallery, August 16-September 5
